Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 15: China in Focus

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

This week I am joined by returning guest Lethal Minds Journal (@lethal.minds.journal), the Cognitive Marine (@thecognativemarine), S2 Forward (_s2_fwd_), Analyze Educate (@analyzeeducate), and Comms and Logistics (commsandlogistics). This week we walked about: -China's logistical problem  -China's military community  -The Chinese civilian perception on a war on Taiwan  -And Steven Seagal     

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Crow In Toam Report Podcast. This week is going to be a delightful trip because we have the most guests we have had at this point. There's five of us today. And before I go down the list of who they are, let's have them introduce themselves. All right, everyone, how we doing? Good, good. Yeah, happy to be here. So if we could like just take a second or two and just go like, I mean, Lethal Minds

Journal, he's been on before we have him. We have analyze and educate. He's had his own podcast, we have the cognitive marine, we have comms and logistics we get a lot of people so if you guys just want to like take a second introduce yourself or we could just jump right into china so yeah we need to do so so once we start uh we feel cognitive analyze educate that way? That way you're always shouting over each other? Of course, man. Sweet. Who's going first? Sounds like you are. All right. So I'm comms and logistics. I am the maintainer and the guy that

responds to all your DMs on comms and logistics. And I mainly focus on communications for off-grid communications for civilians and stuff like that. Awesome. Well this is the Cognitive Marine. I just got done with command as an O5 CO in the Marine Corps in a logistics unit. And my big thing in the kind of center focus of my account is contested logistics, especially as we face China. And my account is slowly drifting over to kind of meeting that threat on a day-to-day basis. Okay, everyone, I'm analyze educate. I'm, I'm on Instagram, I have my podcast really

talk about conflicts, current events, all that kind of stuff. I don't have any formal Intel background, anything like that. I'm an O3 11, or I was O3 11 rifleman in the Marine Corps, and now I'm a student so just interested in the uh conversation and glad to be here i'm lethal minds um i'm the guy behind the lethal minds journal distributor based publication available on sub stack through our instagram and Both of the border lands where we partnered with for tone report. It's having us on again analyze educate s2 forward Once partnered with cognitive marine founding number

my background is I'm an 89 echo of the army you the officer and a Russian policy the Army EOD officer and a Russian foreign policy man. This is S2Ford. I have an intelligence background in the military. I run an OSINT flash news aggregator account that really focuses on Europe, the Middle East and the China Taiwan situation. So what I'm really excited for today is it's really Marine Corps heavy and so I don't know

if anyone's been to Oakey recently but that's the Marine Corps' bread and butter of the pivot to the Pacific focusing on what China has going on and honestly after seeing how they rattled their sword with Taiwan and buckled every single assessment that I've seen when I was in and still today almost came true. So I think it would be really fun to talk about this for about 60 to 70 minutes. Yeah I'll give a kind of an opening salvo on it and get you guys' thoughts and feedback on it. But what's interesting about the China military and I guess the China situation as it pertains to one, there's really two things going on or actually three, there's really three things. There is what's going on with the South China Sea, that nine dash line that we all kind of pretty familiar with.

And if you're not, you should get up to speed whoever's listening to this thing. The other piece is the Taiwan piece. They're interconnected, no doubt. And there's no clear demarcation between them both. But the final thing is the internal control that China has on its population. And I mean that kind of with air quotes there because really China is like a conglomeration of four or five different cultural zones. And there's some areas that have, they're independently governed as China likes to call that, but they, they consider them part of China. But anyway, so my, my, my big, my big angle on this is that Eastern district of China and that is the Eastern command is the one that is squarely

focused on Taiwan. And that's where we saw all of that saber rattling that was done recently was coming out of Eastern District. And they kind of put a flavor on that, you know, for all the Intel guys on this thing, or anyone who's interested in the Chinese military, they really have this capability, they're trying to build this long-range missile capability, like the DF-21, DF-17, those hypersonic weapons, a bunch of other capabilities that are really the Chinese military's trying to stretch the battle space and have deep precision fires. for me as a log guy that's like squarely in our wheelhouse and you know you brought up the marines in the pacific and what we're doing i believe in many cases our you know our marines who are in that weapons engagement zone as the commonart likes to talk about inside the wez once those those marines are going to be positioned there and whoever's there is going to be there and resupply and getting logistics to them, whether that be additional manpower or food, water, whatever it is, is going to be exceedingly tough because the Chinese are going to be

able to strike our assets deep in the battle space, as in from Guam, the West Coast, the United States, Hawaii, so on and so forth. So, you know, like many of you, it was really interesting to see what was happening with the Pelosi visit and the Chinese response. Any thoughts on it? Yeah, so I guess I'm looking at the saber rattling as you called it and kind of wondering what was the point of it all. I mean, obviously they held military exercises, right? It's great to get out there and train, but I think they announced either today or yesterday that the exercises were over. So I guess I'm wondering what was the point? Where do we go from here? You know,

the exercises were originally three days long, I think, and they announced a fourth a day. But now what? You know, I don't think they showcased any capabilities that we didn't already know they had. So it just seems like a lot of smoke to me. Maybe someone else sees that differently. Lethal here. I think actually I've seen a couple of things on this because I think that may have actually been a mistranslation. These I read at the end from the South China Post that the Eastern command had the Fujian army command had announced Fujian is the Eastern command had the Fujian army command had announced

Fujian is the Eastern shot KLA attack. They'd announced that all preparations were complete. And that may have been translated in Western media as the exercises were complete. So we could look at that as and this is yeah, Krootone. We could look at that as one of two things. Number one, they told their people that are completely isolated from the rest of the world that we will respond tactically to the U.S. visit to Taiwan and that they want to legitimize Taiwan. And they did, you know, they shot missiles into the ocean and there was televised, everyone saw

it so they could report back to their people going, hey, we said we did what we said we were going to do. And so the Chinese people can go like, all right, yeah, I guess your government's like upholding their word. And on the other hand, the Chinese government can sit down and go, well, I mean, you just translated our words wrong. No, no, no, we didn't say we're going to invade Taiwan. We said we're going to have staunch tactical response. That's completely different. So and all they have to do is pull that and then the local people just go, yeah, I mean, it checks out for me. And so, I mean, I'm sure we'll get to it here soon, but the Chinese population has a lot

going on right now. I think the last thing that Chinese government needs is a sea to ground war with Taiwan. So yeah, one of the things I've heard is that the entire saber rattling evolution, and I completely agree with you, what we saw the Chinese respond tactically was kind of really nothing we've seen far worse before. And from what I'm hearing that that entire evolution, the Pelosi visit was a full scale dress rehearsal of their command and control. And what the Eastern Military District and that Eastern command basically did

is only a portion of the ground forces showed up for the saber rattling event, but everybody showed up that was in part of the command and control aspect. And what we did see was a lot of fires like cyberfires, space actions, there was a lot of other things in this kind of information domain that didn't hit the media, but some of it did. We saw a lot of websites got defaced. And from what I'm hearing from friends in the inside here is that everybody from the command and control showed up to their offices basically to write it as a full dress rehearsal. So the big picture, Chinese government adopted

their entire military strategy from the Soviets is what the Russians do today. They just took the Soviet method and went, you know, let's just apply to our same forces. It's down indoctrinated into our guys. And so if we look at something like Georgia 08 is like a dress rehearsal and cyber attacks are a indication of something to come. That's one thing, but that's land to land. It's really easy to roll a tank across the border into an unsuspecting country. thing, but that's land to land. It's really easy to roll a tank across the border into an unsuspecting country. It's another thing to take a landing craft loaded with tanks and move it a hundred miles East. And so it's like, if Taiwan's entire military is designed to defend no offensive maneuvers, that's it's like, Hey, I'm just saying, like I was never

in the military and I've never done Intel or anything, but I think China knew that a snap reaction to their entire military doing V-Taiwan was not going to be very fruitful. And so they just, again, went back to the people and reworded everything and said like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you misidentified what we were saying. What we said was, and then I'll just go from there. I think, you know, I think there's actually, to go back to, you know, Chinese people, the Chinese people were, were and I think are expecting the invasion of Taiwan. Because there has been very nationalist criticism of the Chinese government's response. Now it's all been local, right?

So it's criticism of local officials, like army commanders not helping the troops do what they need to do, stuff like that. But there have been calls for a plane to be shot down, you know, people asking on Weibo when the attacks start. And I think. Weibo when the attacks start. And I think, yes, you know, and Krootor and I touched on this in the last podcast I was on. The Chinese military is based on the Soviet model, but it lacks some of the flexibility

that the Russians, because of their experience, their military experience from World War II and previously, the flexibility they've learned, and again, they're not very flexible, is entirely absent from China. It's culturally not there and it's also historically not there. Chinese have fought in wars, they don't have an experience base in the NCO Corps, so we know, right, guys, let's figure it out. Right. So I think they started this exercise and rapidly realized, wow, we can't actually solve a lot of things we need to solve to conduct make our first war in 50 years, massive watering seed a land invasion of a hard target. I think they just rapidly discovered that wasn't possible. So real quick, when it comes to say the former Soviet doctrine where

we saw before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians were on VK explaining everything they were doing and they invaded with open comms into Ukraine. So the SBU could just intercept that really quick. And so this is for like comms and logistics. And I'm glad you're here where it's like China is a real tough nut to crack when it comes to getting anything out of them. So if you looked into that at all and and or if you have how easy is it to pick up on what the Chinese are talking about? Yeah, so a lot of it can be broken down into several categories. You have their senior military communication structure, which is pretty heavily protected.

And if you break down further, you go down the chain of command, the more exposure there is to the rest of the Chinese internet,. But it's generally speaking, like, it's very hard to secure that many people. It's very hard to secure the the actions of your military when you have so much going on and so much potential for leaking and stuff like that, at least on the Chinese side. So, you know, it's just there's a lot of uncertainty with their communication structure. We really haven't seen it work at its fullest potential like the Russians, like how we have the Russians, how we've seen the Russians. So I hope that maybe gave you some insight. I could probably break it down a little further.

Well, if I could jump in here just real quick on a point, this is analyzed. One thing I'm concerned with is, I think just how little we know about their military and how it functions at the highest levels. You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but it just seems like we don't have a lot compared to our other adversaries, say Russia or Iran or somebody else. I know the CIA had a network of informants in China that were basically all in prison or killed off years ago and now our intelligence agencies really have nothing inside the country and that's something that's

really concerning to me. Yeah, I definitely agree. It's very difficult to know the enemy or it's very difficult to combat the enemy when you don't know a whole lot about them. the enemy, or it's very difficult to combat the enemy when you don't know a whole lot about them. And I feel like that's, that might be by design. I feel like that is the uncertainty of their capabilities, the uncertainty of how they'll play out is part of their tactic. So I think something that's really funny is, and this might be just, you know, a little narrow focus or something, but I live in the DC area area and the Pentagon is just down the road. And every single time a quote unquote Chinese tourist shows up and takes pictures of the Pentagon. They're immediately just on the watchlist. So if you see a Caucasian or an African showing up in China going like, Oh, I'm just going to hang out outside of the military base. They're like, yeah, watch him. They're already on restricted comms, number one. They can't touch the outside world from the internet. Number two, they don't look like they know what's going on, so we just got to watch them. So it's completely different when it comes to...

It's different, but it's the same where it's like, hey, we could just isolate people really quickly and go, yeah, they don't look like they belong here. Yeah, let's go ahead. Oh, thanks. visit to Taiwan. I think what we might be seeing in the future, obviously increased rhetoric from more senior diplomats from China saying that this is inappropriate and going back on the whole, there's only one China, there's no Taiwan, there's the province of Taiwan. But when I'm more concerned about an actual kinetic military action is coming from in the form of the hybrid warfare aspect for plausible deniability, specifically in the form of the hybrid warfare aspect for

plausible deniability, specifically in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, going over those disputed islands through the Chinese maritime militia or other actors that they have that might be able to leverage to squeeze their political opponents or to essentially say a message like, hey, we can reach out and touch you. Just, you know, are you going to prove that we can essentially? Those are just my thoughts on the whole situation. Yeah, you're definitely onto something. This is the cognitive marine here. That so there's two points I really wanted to respond with here so the reason why we don't have good insight is because we just don't and We don't have from what from what I've heard and have seen Wait with the the truth of the matter is is probably a lot lot worse than maybe a lot more benign

And the reality is is we just don't got really good sources and the sources we do have got to stay low, you know, and we there, the Chinese have purposely have kept much of that close hold for, for good reason. You know, there's a tactical advantage obviously in that. But to your second point about what's going on in the South China Sea, there's one more thing I want to throw in there, and that is the Chinese are almost looking for a reason to respond. And right now, everything is kind of, you know, there's incredible photos of near collisions occurring, a US aircraft being brushed away by a Chinese J-20 or whatever it is. And the reality is that one day that's not going to happen. One

day there's going to be a collision or a surface-to-air missile is going to be fired. And we've seen far less benign areas or far more benign areas accidentally strike a civilian airliner or, you know, accidentally shoot down a military aircraft. And that is the situation I'm not going to say I fear, but that's the situation that I'm certainly waiting to pop up in the news one day early in the morning, early at night. So when it comes to something like that, I like to look at the fact that China claims that they have the second largest GDP in the world for funding in the military, where it's like US number one, China number two, Russia number three. And so you can look at that and go, all right, so we already know China's hyperinflated when it comes to their accusations of their own military. And so their inability, quote unquote, to rapidly respond to a invasion in Taiwan within 72 hours where, hey, here in America, we know that we could

pick up an entire airborne division from Fort Bragg and drop it in Lithuania in 72 hours, and it will happen. China could not muster all of their logistical support to invade Taiwan 100 miles away, which makes me go like, they're going to take a backseat for a little bit and readjust some things because number one, they're based on the Soviet doctrine. taking ground in Ukraine, but they're taking significant tactical losses. And it's because they're based on that. It's not a strategic corporal in Marine Corps terms calling a strike on a building. It's the general of the local division going, yeah, you can do that. So I think China's going to take a backseat after this going, yeah, we rattled our saber. We got our message across to our people. The whole world kind of called us out and we need Taiwan by 2049. And that's not invasion by 2049. That is incorporation by 2049. And it takes one generation at least to do that. So I think they're going to have a lot to think

about in these next few years. That's exactly right. I think, I mean, yes, China, the intelligence problem with China is that we don't have a lot of Chinese people that can get into China and operate. But we can always sort of look back at Chinese performance over the past 40, 50 years. And we do know for a fact that one, Chinese army has not fought a war successfully in 400 years and hasn't fought a war since 1975. Not a single member of its general staff or any of its field grid officers or any of its company grid officers

or any of their commissars, which they still have, have seen actions or engaged in military activity. I think the only combat they've actually seen has been at Tiananmen Square, where they killed a bunch of protesters. Second, we also know, like Proton was saying, most Chinese economic numbers are falsified, if not all of them. So all Chinese economic activity, in general terms, this is why we're seeing them having major problems internally with runs on banks, mass defaults, businesses suddenly turning out to be bankrupt. Because they've been lying,

they've been reporting great numbers to the central committee because no one wants to be the guy reporting bad numbers, right? They're making all the green check marks green and they're sweeping problems under the rug. That's also probably true in the Chinese army. There was a recently purged Chinese army official who informed the central committee that there wasn't a single general in the Chinese army who hadn't paid him personally for his stars. That suggests to me that there is endemic corruption inside the Chinese PLA. If it's within the PLA, it's in PLM and it's in the PLA AF, the Air Force and Navy respectively. And I think-

So that brings me to another point where I was talking about this with Al Khaan as to, you know, he's a Kiwi, but he was in the Australian or New Zealand Army for like 15 years. I went, hey man, was New Zealand and Afghanistan? He went, yeah, of course. And I went, great, brings me to question number two. When's the last time China fought a war? And he was like, I don't know, Korea. I was like, yeah, successfully. So it's any American or Western military officer does not work their way up unless they've been a part of global war on terror. And so that's very culturally identity to how the military works over here. And then in China, it's Russia too. Who has the most money? Oh, yeah, you could be a division commander.

No, I know you've never been in the military, but it's really cool that you have $10,000. And that just goes down to the idea that China is very top heavy and it's based on that Soviet doctrine where if you have a, say, general and or lieutenant all the way up or any O period who's never been into the military, they're not going to perform properly. So moving at a hundred miles east in an LAV is just not logistically possible. I mean, I think it's, I don't even, I don't necessarily like the term Soviet because they don't have that, necessarily have that sense sacrifice the Soviets. One of the great successes in Soviet military is the Chernobyl disaster, where the Soviets at their lowest point say,

we are putting a hundred thousand troops into Chernobyl to clean up this nuclear disaster zone by frigging hand. And they did it. And those troops went in, either because they were made to or because they just thought, okay, got it. This needs to happen. Right. I served the Soviet Union. Right. That Russian meant there's a Russian expression. I'm getting how to say in Russian, but it's if not me, then who? Right. It's a World War Two expression. Like, I'm here. Someone's got to take that machine gun out. First First who does it's going to die, but I'm the guy here. So I'll do it. Chinese culture doesn't do that, right? The one child system means that in a culture where the elders are cared for by the young, there is one guy that has to carry on the family name and take care of the family when they're old.

That dude's not running the machine gun machine. Culturally, it's not. And also there's that bureaucracy that's sort of been with China since Confucius, where they have this very like sun-su style of military thinking where they're like, oh, if the general like, you know, perceives the way, you know, he does what he needs to do. And the commanders on the ground are obedient enough. It'll all work because the general in charge saw the way and so wise. Yeah. I think that comes from them just not having fought a war since Vietnam, and not being very good at it when they did. You know, I don't think they have a realistic understanding what actual war planning is anywhere in their military. Lethal, if I can make a point real quick, I like that you brought up the one child policy and cognitive. I know you made a post about this

later or earlier today. I think it was China's population is aging rapidly because of the one China policy. So it makes me wonder the more and more years that go by, how capable are they going to be able to keep up a war with the West when they're going to take high casualties, they're going to have to replace those numbers in the units. If they have an aging populace, then that's going to be a lot more difficult for them. And it's also going to be difficult for them to keep up their industrial base if they have an aging workforce. That's exactly right. I mean, you're hitting the nail right on the head here. All that is absolutely true. And I think the so what and all that is the timeline for seizing, seizing Taiwan moves up and moves to the left.

Basically it's going to happen much sooner than I think any of us are predicting good assessments out there. And you're right that 2049 date is to have like full control. So, you know, that's like the latest possible data when the entire island of Taiwan is totally, you know, incorporated into China. But so yes, I think all of that is a long way of saying that the date for when the seizure of Taiwan will occur moves to the left and it'll happen sooner. I'm hearing less than four years. So this is Comms Logistics. I sort of have a point to make, maybe a counterpoint or maybe a counter argument. The thing is, is that we really have to ask the question,

is China in any condition to fight a war against an island that they are so logistically dependent on? And what I mean by logistically dependent is that I feel like this is sort of a topic that that not a whole lot of people cover on, but it's about the chip, the microchip foundries and assembly in Taiwan. relies on Taiwan for microprocessors and electronic assembly and stuff like that. When and if the Chinese attack Taiwan, what will happen to those foundries? Will they get destroyed? What will happen? Right? So, and we know that China heavily relies on Taiwan for those chips. That is something that the Taiwanese have leveraged quite successfully, is to kind of keep that on their island. And I feel like if they do attack, one, they run the

risk of destroying those boundaries. Two, they definitely might have logistical issues in terms of supplying their military with electronics, night vision, if they have any, I'm sure that there's some dependencies on Taiwan and especially manufacturing missiles or any weapon systems of any kind. I guarantee you that there is some logistical dependence on the Taiwan for that. So I feel like Taiwan is a very, very critical control point. And if you rock the boat a little too hard with kinetic war, then it could ruin it for everybody. That's just my point.

Yeah. So I have something on this Crotone. I have something on that. So China understands that Taiwan is the world's leading producer of chips. You know, the chip manufacturing from your iPhone to your car are so dependent on Taiwan, which is why, A, the United States went, yeah, we're going to open our own factory in Arizona, which is very far away from Taiwan. Number two, China went, where do you get these minerals? The Horn of Africa. All right. So I'm just going to buy the land on the Horn of Africa, Donald Trump method. I don't need to own the house. You need to own the doorway. So it's, so they're trying to get one step ahead to within not this generation, but the next before 2049 to economically strangle

the Taiwanese government to win this generation's voters or in politics and 20 years going, let's just give it up. It's, it just makes more sense. We're getting crushed here. And then on that one child policy, you have two generations of only men running around. It's a lot of horned up guys. You know who they fight a lot? The Indians, because there's no water coming into their agricultural areas where they import food or produce food. So they're trying to redirect the water from the Himalayas into the Chinese kind of like agricultural centers, but the Indians are going no, we're building dams. So it's, it's strange to say China's fighting like a two front war, cold war kind of thing where they're going, we got to stop the Taiwanese from making money, but we got to stop the Indians from taking our water. So they're kind of like moving their forces all around. And just by watching how they interact with the Indians, it's they can't have guns, but they have fists and the Indians beat the hell out of them. So it's, there's a lot going on. A point, actually question for Atom. First, anecdotally, there is a video of a Sikh regiment of the Indian army, which issued

sabers as part of a ceremony and dress uniform, hacking a Chinese company off a hotel in the fall with their sabers, because sabers aren't guns and therefore not banned. So the Chinese guys showed up with sticks and the Indian soldiers showed up with swords. It's very reminiscent to the Soviet Sino War from like the 70s and 80s where the Chinese out of nowhere went, hey Soviet Union, this is my island along the borders of Manchuria. And Soviets went, no it's not, it's always been ours. So the Chinese sent guys and the Russians sent tanks and ran them over and they said, you want to try me? So it's the Chinese trying to play like that diplomatic angle going, yeah, I mean, you know, this is ours. You can't take our water and the Indians went, what if I brought a gun? Yeah, right. That changes everything. So

my question, I guess is like, given the China's pursuit policy, we for a long period of time of buying up, you know, land in mineral rich land in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, partially to starve Taiwan, but also to ensure that it has resource control abroad, so it can feed its own industries and colonization efforts in Africa to build a controlled foreign production base for its own internal needs. Given that, why have they suddenly switched to this four-year timeline, right? Where all the estimates basically say that China is going to go into Taiwan in the near future. Why did they not let it just tie one the way the daughter bird very natural. And this might just be my own personal experience talking, but nothing happened from 2016 to 2020.

And then as soon as the American president trips up a flight of stairs, Taiwan has 35 flyovers and the Ukrainian buildup starts. And then the Americans botched the exodus of Afghanistan, the Americans, the Brits, all of NATO. They start fighting amongst each other. It was widely televised. They left. It makes the Chinese and the Russians go, oh, they don't like each other and they don't

like to talk in the same terms. So if the United States comes out of nowhere and goes, yeah, we're going to build our own chip manufacturing plant in Arizona, the Chinese go, they don't want to fight. They're gassed after 20 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they're still in Iraq, and that's still not going anywhere. So I think the Chinese are a pressed economically because we can get there here soon. Where their housing market's going to crash. They have had COVID restrictions for two plus years where they have people just stored in skyscrapers and they're just like, you can't leave. And they're taking their animals and they're taking their cats and they're

dehumanizing their own population. And three, they're just going like, Hey, uh, we just had the snap reaction. We cannot invade Taiwan right now. We have to start right now to invade next year. So it took the Russians a year to build up on their border of Ukraine. And they still botched it going in. So the Chinese might go, we need to take some time to do this one. So I mean, I don't know what everyone else is thinking, but that's just off the cuff,

firing from the hip here. But that's just, you know, off the cuff firing from the hip here. Strategically, like as a whole country of China, they're regarding India. They're playing a really tight, in my opinion, balancing act because with India, they are competitors, as you said, Croton. But they're also part of BRICS, the economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And at the same time, the biggest customer, if you want to call that, for the Belt and Road Initiative is Pakistan. So although they are economic allies, but they are competing in the Himalayas over access to resources. At the same time, they have this huge leverage over Pakistan, where although they don't necessarily directly need to

say, hey, we're going to beat you with sticks and stones on the mountain somewhere in a faraway land, but at the same time, I don't know if this is like an open-end question. I wonder what the appetite is for the Chinese military or government to leverage that heavy economic pressure on Pakistan to do something for them. It's like, hey, the Hindu Kush, that's an issue, right? Do that because they're picking up, pissing us off. So I think the big thing and, you know, cognitive Marine, you could probably elaborate on this, but the US left Afghanistan, the Taliban got pretty strong, pretty fast. And they border the Chinese Uighur population who are widely known to be in prison and thrown in cages and just going, Hey, renounce Islam, you're Chinese. What's to stop a couple of Taliban fighters

to walk across the border going, we beat the Soviets, we beat the Americans, we can beat the Chinese. It's so the last thing the Chinese population and the government needs is an Islamic insurrection out East after a undefeated champion from the last 35 years? Yeah, no doubt. I think those are all kind of valid points and to kind of respond to your Muslim issue. a probably a social re-engineering, a religious re-engineering and a cultural re-engineering, unlike that would have made what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. I wouldn't say pale in comparison, but certainly at least match or exceed what happen then. And for the large part, I'm not going to say that what they've done in northwestern China has been successful, but I will say that it's generated results that the leadership of China basically, or leadership of the CCP is basically saying, yeah, this is going as about as good as we had

hoped. There's some kind of side effects here. But no one is holding us to account at the end of the day, right? Tesla is still building the largest factory in the world and, and, and China. So, you know, all the Hollywood is still there, all of American industry is still there. So they're not losing anything. And kind of just to throw it out there, one of the reasons why I think the timeline has moved up from especially in my own kind of circle of people I talked to is there's a couple things. One is that President Xi is not getting any younger and the guy's 69 years old, he turned 70 soon. And the reality is

is that there is and he's going to this year alone, he's going to cross a threshold of which no leader in China has ever crossed in the last 50 years since Mao Zedong, which is he's going to break the term limits that was constitutionally mandated, and he's going to be the longest serving leader of all time. But he's got to deliver on a whole host of things that he has promised, or the CCP starts changing over. Another thing that's also happening over the next year, it has been happening, 85% of all the party leadership in the CCP is changing over. So they serve on these five-year terms and a whole new set is all rolling in over the next couple of months, actually time now.

So he's got a new party leadership that is there. This party leadership is going to elect new senior military leaders, it's going to elect new party leadership, it's going to elect new representatives in the party. So that's all happening now. And he's still kind of the lone guy hanging on. Now, there's good assessments from people out there that believe there's a window of time he's got to make his move. He gets older, four years from now, five years now, he's a 75-year-old man. the party, maybe that this new group that's rolling in may say, Hey, this dude is kind of getting old here. How do we force this guy out? How do we send this

guy packing, you know, stage left here without a overthrow or anything to that effect. And all these new military leaders are basically itching to use what has been a multi-trillion dollar investment by the Chinese. I mean you got a hammer, you're going to want to use it. And then now what you're seeing is greater and greater political recognition of Taiwan. You got more countries today recognize Taiwan than ever has been and China, the CCP understands this. They also understand that the window under which 30, 40, 60 countries starts recognizing Taiwan, the game has changed. And so given all of those factors, the economic issue someone brought up, I mean, that's exactly right.

The gig is going to be up here soon. Well, one of the interesting things and not to belabor the point, I'll shut up here in a second, is the One Belt One Road Initiative, which is really unbelievable, if you really dive in, is they used all Chinese labor, all the material, the materials came from China. So and, you know, I think some people who look at the One Belt One Road Initiative kind of laughed because all that was is as domestic demand in China dived, they needed to send this capability, this capacity somewhere. And they basically said, let's pour a trillion dollars out of thin air and create this one belt one road initiative. They're not only curry favor and buy people, buy countries and ports and airports

and trail lines, but we got to this industrial capacity has got to be at work on Monday, and we need to send this for somewhere. So that's a long way of saying, given all of those factors, you're going to see, you know, America is a much more diminished country politically overseas than has ever been before. Do the Chinese gamble that in five years this thing changes? Also, based off of administration, I think the Chinese are recognizing that most Americans could not find Taiwan on a map. And the day they get smart or a new president gets elected, maybe this thing changes.

Thoughts? Yeah, on the economic stuff. So I think we've all heard the term ghost cities. Yeah? Yeah. That's basically the same thing, right? The Chinese economy, and again, we talk about, you know, we're going to go back to the Soviets for a second. The great leap forward, the

five to 10 year plans. These are all sort of communist ideas about how to get to a place of high economic productivity, right? But just because the Chinese are getting into capitalism over the last 30 years, it doesn't mean they have abandoned that sort of structured thinking. And, you know, plan 2049 is just another great leap forward. Right. We're going to fully reintegrate Taiwan. We'll have rebuilt the Belt and Road. We will be the preeminent power in the Pacific. That's a great leap forward type of plan. And to get there, they're artificially creating

economic activity to bring their economy along so that by the time they're done, that natural economic growth will have caught up to their artificial rate of health. The problem is we started to see in 2015 that that wasn't going to be true. We saw Chinese people weren't moving to these cities. They were staying at home. Crotones talked about the issues with apartments where Chinese people were allowed to own one apartment. So instead of getting married, they just live, partners would live together

and then keep both apartments and they'll rent one. Right. On that real quick. So it's crazy. It's one that comes so yeah, when it comes to the apartment situation, it's insane because almost capitalism has destroyed this communist utopia because number one, China didn't make any money until Morocco or Macau. My mistake.

And Hong Kong were incorporated in 1997. After that, they were like, yeah, we have money now we can do shit, which is, you know, Hong Kong was called the New York of the Pacific. What is this highlighted city, but then the Chinese were going like, Hey, two parties, one system. Hey, we're all on the same page. You make money. I get the paycheck.

You kick it up very mafioso style. Then 2019, they went, yeah, you can't do that. No, you have to stop waiting pictures of the queen and say, you want to go back there. And then when it comes to apartments, it's so the average Chinese individual. Can own one apartment. And if you get married and say, say your man and your wife has an apartment. If you get married, you have to move into his place and your next or her apartment goes to the state.

So they were going, oh, what if for a few extra dollars, I never get married, I'm a life partner, I'm knowing with this guy forever. I give my apartment to somebody, rent it out, make some extra cash, I hang out with this guy, and we live our life forever. So that whole platform of capitalism was destroying the entire Chinese economy, where it's not based on personal equity, it was based on the government saying, no, you have a house. Why do you need to? So that was almost the start of the entire economic situation we're in today, where Evergreen, the Chinese, economic situation we're in today where Evergreen, the Chinese real estate agency was going like, yeah, we have more houses than we have people. And so the other thing is very 2008 United States situation going like, yo, there are make believe monies being thrown around.

And the other issue is that Evergrande was the primary one. And it's considered for the primary real estate owned apartments. It's one of the ways they generated capital. So yeah, that's the Chinese people aren't buying homes. China was just building lots of homes to create artificial incentive. They were subsidizing that with rent money. Well, here's something else that's crazy. They were building those ghost towns out east, where those we your populations

are in cages. They're like, Oh, no, they live in houses. You see, they have apartments are 100 stories tall. Yes, crazy. Yeah, they're not living in cages. And this was 10 years ago. And so today all this footage is coming out of the CCP putting people in cages and just blasting the little red bug, you know, in their face every single day. And the local Chinese are going, yeah, it checks out. Yeah, it makes sense. But anyone who's in the West is going, that sounds very Holocaust to me. That does not seem like a, anyone's living in that city and B these people are being treated appropriately. So there's a lot, like I said, at the beginning of this, there's a lot going

on in China right now that no one really wants to address from Hollywood going, let's make the set of Mulan on a Weger camp camp to if you don't release your movie Top Gun in the China, you're not going to break a billion dollars. And it's broken like 1.5. So it's there's a lot going on here right now. Yeah, I think we're actually I'm gonna put my tinfoil hat on for a minute. I personally believe that the incentive behind the invasion of Taiwan is the Chinese need a functional economy, basically a functional market that would allow

them to compete on the world stage that is completely organic. They need to control something that will generate real money consistently and naturally. It's not mass construction, whatever like that. We need Taiwan because otherwise our economy's going to collapse. So with that, S2, were you ever in Okinawa? Did you spend time in Japan? No, not yet. Soon though. And like, eventually. Hell yeah. So when it comes to Japan, there's two things when it comes to Oki or not Oki, but like China. It's China's economy is based around like toothpaste lid production. Like who wants to make a toothpaste lid in the US? If you're from Pennsylvania, is your dream to make toothpaste lids?

No. Yeah, make some Chinese guy do it. It's crazy. It's whatever. But when it comes down to it, if the entire world just goes, hey, let's move all the production of clothes and toothpaste lids back to Italy, like it was in the 80s, China's destroyed. Their entire market is ruined. And I think that the CCP these days are going, yeah, I think that the world's waking up to our quote unquote bullshit. So they need to A, make the promise to the people to go right back into Taiwan, because Taiwan's military policy is retake the mainland. It's been like that since 1949, but the CCP is take Taiwan, not because they're a rogue state, but because they're ours and they're being a problem child. So it's nothing different, big picture, than Russia looking at

Crimea going, no, that's ours. Like you can't take that from us. And so, you know, we're 53 minutes into this and just looking at the China situation, there's so many ways to look at this. It's, you can look at economic where they're struggling population, they're top heavy. It's no different than the Russians or the Japanese. And the B or C they are like we need to step out and uh A keep those Muslims in line because we don't need the Taliban looking over and instigating a revolution in the east because do you think China can sustain insurgency? I don't think so that's just me but then they also have their Belt and Road Initiative in the Horn of Africa, where I've talked to Nigerians and Central Africans.

They've hit me up saying the Chinese have showed up and they're just racist and they're bullies and they don't play nice with anybody. And the local government is going, no, we need to stop talking to China. So that's why China is migrating to Central and South America, which is on their part very smart, but on our part in the West, it's just... We're fighting on one leg back diplomatically, and we have been since she became the president of China. Any thoughts? since she became the president of China. Any thoughts? I agree on all parts, especially about South America. In regards to actually doing kinetic actions in Taiwan,

I think I spoke about this lately the last time we all talked, but a lot of people in, I know my audience for sure, I don't know about y'all's, but Taiwan completely isn't far away from China to conduct military operations. Kinmen County and a couple other sparse islands within the Taiwan Strait or Kinmen County specifically, who's just about 10 clicks off mainland China, they can easily just use the rocket forces to attack or aerial insert or conduct those amphibious assaults. They've been practicing over the past five to ten years and just do it there. And honestly, there really wouldn't be anything that Taiwan people do about it because it's just so close to China that you could easily protect forces. I think one of the biggest indicators of a full-scale invasion of Taiwan would be an attack against Kinmen County or

any other smaller uninhabited, hardly inhabited islands as more of a, we did the thing that we were going to say, we are going to attack Taiwan to quell any sort of insurrectionists like we've been talking about this whole entire time. And as a political move to show their willingness to like back to their people, say, hey, we are willing to knock down any sort of insurrection. We are willing to use military force to show not only the Chinese people, but the international stage, which they'll probably have backlash, which I think is tinfoil hat there is why they're investing and cooperating so hard in bricks. So they can bypass any sort of international sanctions

that we saw imposed on Russia, so they can use the BRIC system to keep their economy somewhat stable. And Stu, just to go off one of the points you made, we've seen recently that the PLA rocket forces are building around 100 new missile silos in eastern China, which are around 100 new missile silos in eastern China, which are well within range of hitting Taiwan. So I think Taiwan is very vulnerable from those sort of precision fires from China. I know they have some air defense, right? They have like lad batteries, I think, and those kinds of things, but I just don't think they have enough to defend from the plethora of precision fires that China can levy against them.

So I think that they really rely on the U S's ability to double down on their statement that they will defend Taiwan. Where last year the Chinese sent their Leo Liang aircraft carrier through the straits of Taiwan and we sent one destroyer, which is, hey, nothing like aircraft carrier would destroy that thing. But it's, they're really leaning on the fact that the U S will help them. And this Nancy Pelosi visit is really reinforcing the idea that Taiwan will survive. And let's look back six months.

There was the Olympics. Lithuania, of all people said Taiwan's real. And it was insane. Like this little Baltic nation stood up against China and it was a domino effect of African and South American and Middle Eastern, all these countries going, yeah, I think Taiwan is real. So I think that's also accelerating the CCP's agenda of we need to take Taiwan, of, you know, it's like David and Goliath,

it's like this tiny little rock is thrown, and you're like, oh, hold on, this guy can do that? All right, yeah, I believe in that. Yeah, not even, when you look at the sort of recognition of Taiwan that we're seeing across, you know, the international stage, particularly in Europe, like with little Lithuania, excuse me, that you were saying, we're even seeing rhetoric like that at the local level, like in Prague, for example. Obviously, it's a pretty big city, right. But it's one thing to have a central government

speak for its citizens on issues of Taiwan and China. It's something else to have a government at the city level. Use that same rhetoric, right? Yeah, it also I mean, the foreign minister from Lithuania also called the Chinese ambassador, who by the way was trying to get money out of Lithuania, oh, Chinese and money, which is decided it wasn't gonna pay, which is also part of why Lithuania recognized it.

Anyway, foreign minister called the ambassador ambassador fat loser during the speech, which is just through delightfully casually disrespectful. I'll throw this out there. The best delightfully hilarious. Yeah. I mean, I think people are starting to catch on by everyone's been saying to the fact that China is a bad actor. And I think it was S2 posted that they're like the no money down 27% APR loan car company of countries, right? Where they're the guy that's going to loan you money,

and they're going to take your whole house by the time you're done hanging back. And I think people are starting to see that. So gentlemen, I have a question for you. And this one's a literally the most difficult to address, but China has historically been a warlord kingdom, like a coalition of the willing of independent States, what happens if China goes full Soviet Union? They break up. We've got the Xinjiang province. We have all these guys.

What's going on? Tinpul Hattari, like straight up, I think the, oh man, the Manchuria population would attempt to, I don't know, make their own more North Korea, if that makes any sense. I don't know, make their own more North Korea. If that makes any sense. I don't know what they call it. Maybe actually Manchuria. But maybe Manchuria is what's like, oh no, I'm the last Imperial Japanese leader. And so Manchuria historically has an imperialistic ideology. And

that's why the Russians, the North Koreans and the Chinese watched them. They're like, these guys are very deep state, like almost like deep state, like Tea Party Republicans. Like they're gonna do something before anyone else. So. I also have another tinfoil I have to read that. The, with the Uyghur population out West, it's a whole overlap of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, like who owned what, when, Samplik, Uzbekistan. But I think those countries would fight over that part of Western, not fight maybe like

diplomatically, but you know what I mean? Which area would be ceded to them if something were to break up if they don't become their own independent nation or satellite state of whoever? Yeah, to kind of answer your question, I think it's possible that we could see something reminiscent of balkanization, I guess, for lack of a better term in China. You have the Uyghurs who at least a certain portion of them want to, they want self determination, I guess, is one way I could put it. You also have the Tibetans in the South and which pulling India into the mix, there's a lot of

Tibetans in India that want to go back to their ancestral homeland, right? And they'll take it by force if they have to. So I think there's going to be, well, there could be widespread fighting in pretty much all the ethnic regions of China at the very least. I feel like it'll be a return to the warlord phase of China.

I feel like it'll just, excluding external influence, I feel like it'll sort of go back to how it was before the whole communist uprising and stuff like that. But I feel like there's going to be a lot of external influence if that does happen. I feel like there's probably going to be some imperialism for sure, maybe even outsourcing of slave labor if that, happen. I feel like there's probably going to be some imperialism for sure, maybe even outsourcing of slave labor if that if it comes down to that. So for me right now, I'm thinking like it's 1936. There's warlord China, there's a civil war in Spain, there's multiple powers fighting for dominance. It's literally 1936 in 2022 where there's all of these countries sitting down going, oh, we're trying to get

in charge. And there's, which is A, you could look at it as a prelude to a world war, go with that as you will. And then number B, you go, yeah, China is always just going to be that pain in the ass. Like in the corner of the world going, yeah, they supply good labor, but we can't trust them. I think we're more likely to be in a warring states period for China, should China collapse? Certainly China spends most of its time in pieces, right? That's why we have the dentists, right? So there's a government that works for like a couple hundred years, China falls apart

about 500 years. Then China fixes itself, falls apart, fixes itself, falls apart, fixes itself, falls apart. Fixes itself, falls apart. Fixes itself, falls apart. Every time it falls apart, it tends to fall into like four to seven pieces. And that's like Uyghur China in the east or the west, Canton China in the south, Nepal, central China usually breaks up in order two pieces, and then Mongolia, Manchuria in the north. Right? That's sort of how China breaks up. I think we'd end up with something like that. I think any international

interference in China would be a lot more 55 days of decay, right? An international coalition of willing partners moving to China to seize nuclear weapons, to prevent genocide, etc. I can't see us returning to the bad old days of colonialism. I just can't. With international powers stepping in, I wonder, and this is just me thinking out loud, if China were to break up, if there'd be a Hong Kong version two or three with Shanghai or Beijing or other major cities that are important to global economy, and Hong Kong being back to prior to the incorporation of Hong Kong into China. I wonder if we'd see any of that. Yeah, to that point, actually, Hong Kong and I think Shanghai is a little bit outside if it's close enough. Hong Kong and Shanghai are, Hong Kong is definitely within, Shanghai is close to

the Cantonese region of China, which is a different dialect, second largest Chinese ethnic group. Excuse me. We could see Taiwan reunite with West Taiwan, which is just Canton, China. So the islands of Taiwan, southernmost China, right, where Hong Kong is, that's tripping, leading to Vietnam and Thailand, and then Shanghai. And you have the wealthiest nation in Asia, which is just the most important cities in China plus Taiwan. I'm glad you brought up the scenario of Taiwan reunifies

with China. It's I don't know, maybe it's like a crazy scenario probably wouldn would never happen. But let's say Taiwan and China did reunite under a democracy similar to what Taiwan currently has or maybe even the same exact government. I think a lot of people don't realize that Taiwan claims the same exact borders that China does. I'm talking nine dash line, the territories in India, Xinjiang, Tibet, like all of it, the same exact borders. And I think, again, if that

situation did happen, probably won't. But if it did by some off chance, I don't think our country in specific is ready to deal with that reality diplomatically? Do we not think that a country like, let's say if we're talking about a re-infiltration of China and in Taiwan's favor, which I think was analyzed the scenario there, do we not think that Taiwan, to get to that place, might say, all right, look, we're going to recognize a bunch of international borders and territory we don't really care about. a bunch of international borders and territory we don't really care about. And in return, we're going to get X, Y, and Z, treaty guarantees X, Y, and Z, international support X, Y, and Z, to ensure that we never have to run the risk of Mandarin Chinese aggression to put again. Isn't that possible? Yeah, no, now that you say that, I think it is possible. I guess I personally don't know enough about the dynamics of Taiwanese politics or, or their society to really make a judgment on that.

But I mean, I guess it would be in their best interest. At least from what I see. All right, everyone, I think we're gonna close out here. I think it's been about an hour plus. So, analyze, educate, comms, leaf of minds, everyone just sit down and plug our pages because this Instagram community that is growing is legitimate. So, it's a podcast right now, but you know, here next month,

it could be something bigger. So everyone go right ahead. Okay, well, you guys could find me at analyze educate on Instagram, Twitter, you could look up analyze and educate wherever you find podcasts on there. Very happy to be working with the Lethal Minds Journal and working with all these guys. Yeah, I'm super, super excited to be writing for the Bulletin and yeah, just very thankful for the opportunity and all the support everyone's given. the of S2 Forward, Analyze Educating has just joined our team, Pro Tone Report, Good Political we just joined our team, Alcon S2, Northern Provisions, and Meridian News.

We think it's a fantastic product. We think if you are interested in the world around you, you should be reading it. Our main publication, The Lethal Minds Journal, is free on our sub stack. We have a lot of stuff in the works, a lot of stuff involving gentlemen on this podcast right now. Lots of stuff to be excited about and we look forward to being in your inbox on the 15th. This is S2Ford. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter and my backup account, TacticalSideExploitation.

I post news regarding Europe, Middle East, and the Pacific, primarily focusing on the Taiwan situation. I'm a contributor to the Bulletin for the Borderland and working with lethal mines. I'm a news aggregator, OSAN analyst. I'm the only admin running Discord open on either end. I'm comms and logistics. You can find me on Instagram at comms and logistics. I'm basically just working on some products here and for communications and key loading and secure communications in general.

And that's basically, I'm making some new videos coming up here soon about programming and stuff like that. And I know I couldn't add a whole lot to the conversation today, but I'd be extremely thankful to be on this podcast here today. All right, everyone, real quick, before we dip,

how do we feel about Steven Seagal hanging out in Mary Opal? I think it's hilarious, honestly. His crack pipe must be hot. I mean that guy, that guy is the biggest fucking goober. Like excuse my language. Goober. Ridiculous man.

He's a straight up goober. I remember like my, you know, my mom would like show me his movies and I was a kid and I didn't think anything of it. Right. He's just like another 80s actor. But like now seeing him actor, but like now seeing him, it's like, what, what the hell happened to this guy? He's, he's ridiculous, man. My favorite thing about, uh, Steven Segal is he was seen training Belarusian soldiers and martial arts two days before

the Russians invaded. I was like, is this game literally going to be in the trenches here? Honestly, that's Chernobyl. That's I was like, is this game literally going to be in the trenches? Honestly, that's noble. That's I was like, why is he there? And then you think, oh, yeah, he's a Serbian national and Russian self-proclaimed best friend. So it's like, what's it's when, you know, I'm going to plug them. It's a, the filthy American posts of that. I went, there's no way, there's no way Steve's to go is there. It's, it's amazing, dude.

If anyone knows who Andy stump is, he's like a Navy seal who has his own podcast. He was like this tactical advisor for Steven Seagal for a bit. And he talks about his experience on one of his podcasts, you could probably look it up on YouTube. And it is amazing. Like it is a straight up horror story, man. It's hilarious. If anyone wants to look it up. Steven Seagal is one of those very, very strange guys, like, and like I put him in the same basket of like Sylvester Stallone, right? These action stars that think they can do the thing that they actually can't do. Right.

I'm going to put him in the same category as like Peter Cullen. Like, yeah, you're voicing the wrong character there, pal. Like, yeah, the only difference between Steven Seagal and like Chris Pratt and Sylvester Stallone is that Stephen Seagal didn't have the charisma to carry that through to a successful career, which is why he's in Russia now. Yeah, he's something else, man. He's kind of like the Dennis Rodman of Hades action stars. No, it's insane. Have you ever watched the, uh, the videos of him going to the Kremlin and he's like, Putin's my best friend. And then Kremlin puts out an official press conference. They're like, Putin has seen his videos and he thinks he's okay.

And then Steven Seagal said, yeah, I'm training his boys in CQB. They're like, are you really? I was like, yeah, I'm training his boys in CQB. They're like, are you really? But the fact that he pulled up to a widely known execution chamber and was like, yeah, man, just give Crimea to Ukraine. You're like, what, what do you, that's a 180. What are you talking about? It's also claimed that the Ukrainians attacked the site and it wasn't actually a right next

to it. I'm pretty sure he said that the Ukrainians firebombed their own school with wounded Ukrainians. I'm like, dude, it's I get it. You lived in Japan for 25 minutes back in the 80s, but it's cool. But all right, everyone. Yeah, this has been really fun. We're pushing like an hour, 75 minutes. So I'm going to over here, read it, S2 Forward, your rights for everybody. And Coms and Logistics, if you want to talk about Russia invading Ukraine with open comms, hey man, I'm not saying they're stupid, but he's covered it. So everyone, if you want to post something, go right ahead. And then I'm going to cut out. But all right, everyone. Yeah, this has been really fun. We're pushing like an hour,

uh, 75 minutes. So I'm going to over here, analyze and educate really good podcast, Luther, my journal, read it as to, uh, as to forward your rights for everybody and cops and logistics. If you want to talk about Russia invading Ukraine with open comms. Hey man, I'm not saying they're stupid, but he's covered. So everyone, if you want to post something, go right ahead and then I'm going to cut out. No. All right. So yeah. All right. So sorry, my network is dying. Yeah, I think it's just a little... I feel like it's just they are having to scrape the barrel in terms of their resources and just try to get communications equipment out the door.

I feel like the only way that they could economically do that was with BaoFengs and stuff like that. And I feel like both sides are kind of going on that same path in terms of that conflict. So they just can't keep up and dump a lot of money to that communications when they got to, when they have to spend money on a bunch of other stuff. So yeah. Yeah, obviously, comms and logistics can talk about this more than me, but pretty, can talk about this more than me, but pretty crazy seeing quote unquote top of the line Spetsnaz units using Balfangs. That's something I could buy from Amazon for like 30 bucks.

I have a Balfang. I'm not Spetsnaz. Yeah, it just goes to show how far it's deteriorated in terms of their preparedness and their capability in terms of waging war against a technologically, I wouldn't say they're superior, but they're definitely sophisticated. they can get away with using insecure analog radios just because both sides are kind of doing it. It's sort of like, all right, you're doing it, I can do it too, but I feel like there's just too much going on in order for their EWS to actually have enough time to figure out where this was, what was said, how can we react to it. I feel like that's just sort of an afterthought right now.

It's just interesting to see how that played out. So So Thanks for watching!